1309: The Pale-Faced Lie part 2

Speaker: Previously on Pretend, we heard the story of David Crow and his criminal father, Thurston. My show's about con artists, you know, would you consider your father a con artist? The best. The best. David Crowe is the author of The Pale Face Lie, a memoir about growing up as his father's criminal accomplice. In the previous episode, David describes the time he helped his father bury a body. Looks like a human body to me, wrapped in a tarp. And they go and they start digging and digging and digging. And I said, oh, I can tell that's human blood on your clothing. There's human blood on that duffel bag. If a policeman stops us, there's evidence. David's father, Thurston Crowe, lived a life of crime, stealing, lying, and killing anyone who stood in his way. And right beside him the whole time was his young son, David. We start driving and dad and I start arguing. First time I've ever really talked back and I said, that had to be a human body. And he said, none of your damn business. I said, sure it is. I'm an accomplice. He said, you're not accomplice to anything. You're just an idiot son that I own, and you're going to drive, and you're going to shut up. This is one man's story of overcoming a life of crime and trying to make sense of why the one person he trusted the most in this world took advantage of him. I'm Javier Leyva, and this is Pretend. Stories about real people pretending to be someone else. He was a complicated guy, bright guy, but a true psychopath and a true coward. You were always his accomplice in a way. Always. And I always knew it was wrong. And I always knew if I didn't break free, I'd wind up like him. And dad and I went through several discussions, were very heated after that. And I told him I'd never do his bidding again ever. And I didn't know what he had gotten me into. And he always justified everything he did. And he'd say, you see. The white man stole the Navajo's land, stuck them on a reservation, gave them rules, makes them do all these things. So we're stealing from the people who stole from them. We're not doing anything wrong. There's a way to justify. Thurston Crowe would tell his son, remember, you're a Crowe, a Cherokee Indian of superior intelligence and courage. During dinner, Thurston would tell stories about how his Cherokee parents struggled to survive and the vicious white son of a bitches who abused them. And for a long time, David believed it. But David didn't look anything like the other kids in the reservation. His dad explained that they were the pale kind. But now looking back, it's clear that his father was just a pale faced liar. Throughout his childhood, different women came in and out of their lives. Dad was a huge womanizer. He found a lot of women that were in marginal jobs, right? A minimum wage waitress, you're cleaning hotel rooms, you're stocking shelves, you have no real future, you have no education, he knew how to prey on them, he knew how to tell them what they wanted to hear, but the truth is he was just preying on very poor people who had nothing going. But one woman, who David calls Mona, in the book, stuck around. One day, out of nowhere, his dad came in and announced that he was getting married. Mona was a nurse and a strict disciplinarian, which is funny because these kids grew up with no rules. David says she didn't even smile, she didn't hug, and her eyes were cold. Thurston didn't love her. David wondered why would she want to be the mother of these three little monsters. David just didn't understand what's in it for this lady, but David's father's motivation was perfectly clear. So my stepmother had money. She inherited land and she had a federal job of high rank. So if you get rid of her, you get her pension, you get her land. He hated women, basically. And you can start womanizing. You've got all her money in her land and do anything you want. So if you're a psychopath and you're not invested in your spouse or your kids, they're just chattel. They're just things you can use and you get sick of them. You certainly get sick of you and he just never ending. But how did it go down? Like what was his plan? Well, his plan was she owned some land on the outer banks of North Carolina and some of was in a swampy area. It's now 1981. All the kids are grown and living on their own. David moved to Washington D. C. and was working as a lobbyist. Everything was going fine until one day David's sister called. He says he could barely make out what she was saying. Something about, you're the only one who could save her. He tried to calm her down. What happened was, my sister called me and said, Dad's gonna take me to the swamp. The plan was to convince Mona to clear the brush on the swampy part of their Cape Hatteras property in North Carolina. And when she turns her back He hits her in the head with a shovel, chops her up, cuts a hole in her stomach so she doesn't float, puts her in bags, puts heavy rocks in it, and my sister drives her out of there and no one ever saw her and we don't know what happened to her. You know, I don't understand why Thurston would tell his daughter this, but David believed her. He said his sister was hysterical. She worried that if she didn't help, he would kill her too. He's going to take our stepmother there. He's going to kill her. I'm going to drive him out of there. He's going to hide in my trunk. And we're going to say we were together all day. We never saw her. We don't know anything about where she was. So my sister was going to be dragged into this. And she called me, said, you need to help me stop him. But maybe there was more to this plan. David thought, if Dad got his sister involved in a plot to kill Mona, then he knew that his sister would call David. He knew that my sister would call me. He wanted to draw me in. I think he actually wanted to kill me. David says his dad hated him more than anyone else. He was jealous of David's success. He had reached a point with me where I had gone against him in enough times and in his convoluted mind I had done much better than him in my career and it was time to get rid of me. And I knew that. And I understood how he thought. I understood how he used accomplices. I understood everything about him. Thurston's plan was to kill him and Mona. Then he would keep her house and her money. Maybe David should call Mona and warn her. But he says that won't work because she wouldn't believe him. And he says calling the police Wouldn't work either, because that would only make things worse. I understood everything about him. Scary, but it saved me. And I devised a plan. And what was the plan? All this is going to happen on the Outer Banks. He thought that I would go down to the Outer Banks, where all this happened, and stop him. But I knew that he hadn't left for the Outer Banks yet, and he was still up in Washington, D. C. area, you know, lived in a house. About five miles from where I did, and I knew I had to stop him before he ever went down there, and I knew he didn't know that I knew he was there, and so I came up with a plan that I think is a dynamite plan. It worked. I used every trick he taught me against him. And the last letter was for the FBI. He gave the letters to his friend and instructed her to mail them if she didn't hear back from him by Monday. The letters were an insurance policy to make sure his father didn't get away with it. David tells me that he knows exactly what makes his father tick. His plan was to stop him using everything he taught him. There was only one last thing for him to do. He drove to his father's home in Virginia the night before the murder. He snuck into the garage, loosened all the bolts in his father's car, poured sugar down his gas tank, and if that wasn't enough, he wedged a potato into the tailpipe. Before he left, he taped copies of the letters addressed to the police, the paper, and the FBI to his father's windshield. The last letter was a forged confession that appeared to be written by Thurston Crowe. If only he could see his father's face when he discovered it the next morning. But one thing was for sure. There was no way in hell that he would even try to attempt to hurt his sister or Mona. After he left his father's house, David called his sister and told her to stay put. If dad asks, Tell him you have not heard from me. He'll be furious. His sister was worried that her father might try to hurt her, but David said don't worry. My stepmother, she was a strange woman in so many ways. She's smart enough, but just a zero people skill and after my father attempted to kill her and all that, she pretended it never happened and my sister and I made the whole thing up. But it was a very difficult time for me, but I understood him and I understood how to stop him. I have to admit, this is a wild story, but that's what David says happened. Those letters never arrived at the police station, it never hit the media, and there are no public records to corroborate this murder attempt. But he told me that this is all very real. He said he waited his whole life for his father to make the next move. He wasn't worried that Thurston would physically harm him. After all, by now, his father was a frail old man. He was worried that his father would retaliate by destroying his political career in Washington. That would hurt the most. But years passed and nothing. No word from Dad. He didn't hear from his father again until 1983. Thurston called and acted like nothing ever happened. He asked, Why am I the one who has to call you? Years passed, and the old man became weaker and weaker. His heart was failing him, his wife Mona's mind started slipping, and eventually she was diagnosed with dementia. There was no one to take care of him. Towards the end of his life, when I became his legal and medical guardian, and got him through his last year, and I told him I was going to do all this, and I fact checked him against He's extremely angry. You're never going to write this book. I said, oh yeah, I am, but I'll wait till you're gone. And you're an atheist and you don't care and you're not there anyway. And so I'm going to do it. And I laid this all out for him and he may have hated it, but I'm the only kid that talked to him and I was just legal and medical guardian. I actually fact checked with him for about two years. And he didn't like it, but I was the only one who would speak to him. Every story has a hero, and every hero needs a sidekick. In the comics, a sidekick is not just a placeholder or an accessory to the protagonist. The sidekick plays an important part. Their job is not to outshine the hero. Their job is to save the hero from themselves. But they must do it without stealing the show. Remember, the hero always has to remain the center of attention. You And he'd been bragged about stuff, and a lot of stuff were lies. I had to figure out what he was lying about and what he wasn't. There was a lot of tells. He would raise his voice and puff his chest out, and you knew he was lying. But there's times he would repeat things enough. This isn't easy. Sure, David admits that he was an accessory to some of his father's crimes, but he says he never let his father's morals become his own. He eventually made a name for himself in Washington, D. C. And no one around him even knows about his past, but being his father's foil came at a price. I broke up with a girl I probably would have married because I said, you don't want anything to do with my family. And she said, oh, well, we'll understand. No, you won't. And if you do, you're crazy. But it was a defining moment in my life. And it's something I kept back all the way till I was in my early 50s when I started writing the book. After David Crowe published his memoir, The Pale Face Lie, he received a lot of praise. But some of his readers were horrified to read some of the crimes he helped his father commit. You belong in prison. You're a horrible human being. You're just despicable. How do you live with yourself? And you know, the answer I would give I did then did now is from the time I was four, my dad controlled me. He was felt like an NFL linebacker. He beat my brother and I with the buckle end of a belt till we couldn't walk. And he was very bright and very controlling. And it took all the way to that moment for me to break free of that. And no, I did not do the right thing. David tells me that his life could have turned out completely different. I went to San Quentin and met the warden and got a tour. And he said, you should be really proud of yourself. Three out of four guys that go up with a violent con are in the prison cell nearby. He said, you never did anything violent and you should be very proud of that. And my whole life has been about break the cycle. But obviously it took a long time. I think one of the strengths of the book is the honesty. I don't ever portray myself as, um, holier than thou, better than my circumstance, or I was so brave. Sometimes I was brave, a lot of times I was weak, and sometimes I was just a flat out coward. Maybe it just wasn't in your nature, you know? Well, none of the No, and I wouldn't be violent to anybody, and I never would, I just absolutely flat out I don't believe it, in any part of that and stealing, lying, or any of it. David says that he spent his entire life trying to be the opposite of his father. Even towards the end of Thurston's life, he told his son, You always were a do gooder. No one will ever give a shit what you do. Let me assure you of that. After Thurston turned 85, He had a series of strokes. His reign of terror was coming to an end. But before he died, he reached for David's hand and said, You were my favorite one. I love you, son. I always have. And David leaned over and said, I always loved you too, dad. Goodbye. And he walked away. I mean, I'm sorry you had to live this life, but it sounds like you've been very successful. Regardless, despite that. Happily married, great kids. In my lobbying firm, we've had 300 interns that I've helped mentor. Life is good. I have two grandkids that are fantastic toddlers. Good relationship with my siblings. Lots of good things in my life, and I feel very lucky to have escaped it. That's great. Feel broken on the cycle and just be free and be happy. This episode was written by me, Javier Leyva, and Audrey Gibbs. It was also edited by Puneeth Chenoy with the podcast pundits.